Here's How to Actually Live and Work Abroad

are talking all about working abroad. Yeah, people threaten to leave if so and so I was elected president, and I don't know if people actually do it like that, many people follow through on it, right, So, right after the most recent presidential election, there was this all this buzz about how much people wanted to leave the country. On the night of the election, I think the Canadian immigration website crashed from all this traffic it was getting.

I think there was also this huge uptick in traffic to the New Zealand immigration website. So the narrative is always all these Americans are talking about moving abroad, but it sort of remains to be seen whether that actually translates to this massive out migration of people. Yeah, I've seen some people on Twitter actually do it, really, meaning, I've seen some strangers that I follow on Twitter actually move their families so they say so, they say, would

you ever work abroad? Yeah, I mean so. I I haven't ever made this threat, but I I kind of understand the appeal. I have definitely fantasized about working in various different countries, and my fantasies usually get really specific. Like I went through a phase where I was totally obsessed with moving to Santiago, Chile, and then at one point I thought I would go work at like an English language newspaper in pantom Pen And by by the way,

these are places I've never been. And I have kind of learned about myself that when I find myself getting really deep and like going really far down the rabbit hole of googling other countries, it's usually a sign that there's like something that that great wing out of my life that I need to running away from your problems. It's an escapist fantasy, though, what about you, Like, have you ever worked abroad or studied abroad? When I studied

abroad in college, I didn't. That's great. I'm jealous of people who did. Yeah, and Argentina and yeah, it was great. I loved it. I think after that a lot of people are like, I need to live abroad and work abroad, and I had that itch, you know, twenty year old me had that itch. But now I just I like it in America. I like it like I want to fight the good fight and make it work here. And I did go to Mexico City recently and I was like,

I can definitely live here. It's that difference between fantasy and reality. Whenever I go somewhere, I have tried to picture myself living there and like, what would I do? What would my days be like? But I've really barely lived outside of New York. I feel like, at least you're honest about liking the sort of stability and the network that you have here and not needing that much

of a change. For me, it's like, do you really want to work abroad or are you just looking for something to think about that isn't recidily life when you go on vacation, of course you want to live in the places your vacation, right, and you don't think about the work life there. I do remember that from living in Argentina, like the people who lived and work there, it's hard. It's like a hard place to live and work. Everything is easier for tourists, but for people who are

serious about it. It does seem like right now there are unique opportunities for highly skilled professionals to go work abroad. For example, just recently, after President Trump hold America out of the Paris Climate Accords, French President Macron made this big statement about how US climate scientists who are frustrated by the environment here should or would be welcome in France. There was a similar plea Canada made a few months ago about trying to lure tech professionals to to Canada.

So there's there are other allied US countries who are trying to take advantage of what they would perceive as people being frustrated with living in the US and get some of that talent over to their country. Yeah, I've seen articles about people from abroad applications being down at universities here, and that usually like leads to people staying here and wanting to work here. But I think because of immigration worries and visa worries, it's a lot less

likely that they can come work here. So other countries are a kind of saying, oh, look look at us, Look at our great universities. Are are a great companies, right, They're also trying to lure legal immigrants in the US who may not want to stay here because of the

politics of the US. So those are like the headlines that suggest, you know, something might be changing, But of course everybody has their own practical reality, and when you actually think about what it would take to move somewhere else and establish a new life there, it's really daunting. Like for starters, you have to find work that you could do, then you have to get the legal permission to work there. You need a good deal of money

in most cases to to move. And then after all that there's re established sing yourself somewhere else in all of the kind of culture shock that wouldn'to. Yeah, there's definitely a culture shock to working in a country that's not your own. And here at Bloomberg, we have a lot of colleagues from other countries working in our New York offices, so we asked some of them what it's

like to work in a foreign country. I grew up in Pakistan and the most surprising thing about the work culture in the US is how much time we spent working over here. So I'm from Brazil and one of the most shocking things for a Brazilian working in the United States is the fact that people eat at their desks, if they eat it at all. I'm from England and to me, the most surprising thing about working in the US is how willing people are to work on their weekends.

Um from Australia and the biggest thing I think I know with working culture in the US is that working outs are a lot longer here. I'm from Denmark and the most surprising thing about working in the US to

me is the lack of consecutive weeks of vacation. Another very interesting thing is just like the concept of personal space in the United States, especially in the office, where it's it's very different in a place like in Brazil where sometimes instead of like you messaging someone, which would be seen almost as impolite, especially if you're sitting nearby

that person. I mean, people would go out there and just lightly touch that person on the shoulder and say, Hi, here's the facts that it's supposed to deliver to you, and then here. I remember that. Right when I moved.

You know, there was an editor who worked with me very closely, so I would do that right and any one day he said, in the United States, you should stop touching people and I said, okay, I'll never touch any There was a theme to a lot of the things that our colleagues that which is that Americans have terrible work life balance and we don't appreciate vacation for lunch bakes. Yeah they they phrased it in very nice ways, but it does sound from a foreign perspective that working

and living in America is kind of miserable. And and my question was always like, wait, but so why are you here? And it was kind of for the same reason, like the things that are drawing our colleagues from foreign countries are the same things that are kind of hard to adjust to, which is just that people are very

into work here. I mean, some of the reasons for that maybe a little unhealthy, but it also is kind of nice to be around a bunch of ambitious people who are all working on the same project and you know, all feel really strongly about getting it done right. Yeah, So they're willing to sacrifice some of the things the comforts of being in their own country to do something that they want to do, which is what you would have to do if you want to move to Canada

because of the president. Okay, so say you want to work abroad, and you're ready for all the challenges, including the culture shock, but you don't really know where to start. Our guest today wrote an op ed for The New York Times urging more Americans to work abroad. So Katu Meta is the author of Maximum City, Bombay, Lost and Found Any Teachers Journalism at New York University. He grew up in India, moved to the US in the nineteen seventies,

and has lived in cities all over the world. So Kati, thanks for joining us, Thank you, thanks for having me on. In a recent article you wrote for The New York Times, you encourage more Americans to work overseas. Why is that, Well, because of the world bigger than just America, and often people like my students who have spent all the lives

in the United States don't quite realize that. Um until recently eight Americans didn't even have a puff bote until it became obligatory to to having to go to Canada Mexico. And the percentage of Americans that have a puffpote is still quite low compared to Canadians or Brits or Australians.

For what I've trying to say in my article if that for younger Americans, particularly in these days where you know, the last election was all about jobs, that you shouldn't just look for jobs in the United States, and just if my family had to leave rural India in the nineteen twenties and then, you know, look for jobs all over the world. It's now something that more and more

Americans are realizing. And there's actually nine million non military Americans living abroad, up from four million in So say Americans take your advice and they start looking for jobs and work abroad, what do you think some of the biggest obstacles that they might face are, Well, I think a lot of it is just this idea of leaving home. So if you're grown up in France or Germany or Australia, you kind of used to the idea of leaving home

all the time. That if it's not that you love your homeless but because of the geography of these countries, you grow up traveling abroad much more so when Americans go abroad for the first time, and certainly when they go looking for jobs. The first thing he realized that I've written about this in my book Maximum City. When I moved back to Bombay, after twenty one years to

write a book. I was incredibly frustrated that everything, like, you know, the way that the government works or doesn't work, the corruption in everyday life, the filth in the streets, and sometimes just the attitude of people. So I called it country of the No, referring to India, and it took me some time to get used to living again in the country where I was born. So when Americans go abroad, don't expect the rest of the world to

be America. Enjoy the parts of it that are not, and realized that America now is a much more portable notion. That is, when Americans travel, America comes with them in their fast food and their culture here in the clothes. In some sense, much of the planet now looks like America. You mentioned in your article that working abroad isn't something we only have to associate with a certain elite. But how can ordinary people get the things that they would

need to work abroad. Well, it's funny if if here, if you are from the elite, if you've been well educated, uh, you know, if your parents have taken you for spring break to other countries. You grew up with a great offensive confidence intervald But what I've submitted in my article if um, if you go looking for a job in a car factory in Mexico, I mean the car jobs

are moving abroad to Mexico. You're not going to live as well as a unionized auto worker in Michigan, but you might live much better than if you had an eight dollar and our job flipping burgers in Scranton, Pennsylvania. For the idea is that even though the absolute felleries might be lower in these countries, you actually have a shot at leading a middle class life in a country like Mexico or Canada or any of these other factories which if they opened up their labor market to Americans,

you know, you can have a car and apartment. You can basically live a middle class life even if you aren't highly skilled. And I see lots of for example, American security personnel and firefighters in the countries that I go to around the world, So it's it still is mostly for the elite, but there's more and more of the non elite jobs that are opening up for Americans, and Americans are going abroad to take them because they're

drying up in America itself. You talked about how there might be some downsides to living abroad, like a lower salary. Is there any upside to going to a country where you make class money, Well, I mean it helps to realize that, you know, you can actually be happy in a country which doesn't have the same level of like reconsumption. What most Americans are really shocked by when they go abroad if that they can get thick and not go bankrupt.

This is something that came up over and over again in the Instagram response to my op ed. All these young Americans who go to Europe or Australia, and you know, there are all these stories about getting thick, going to the emergency room, getting surgery and coming out and realizing there's no detectible, there's no copay, the government does what it should and health care is treated as a human right.

And then many of these same stories, you know, talk about their horror at the idea of returning to a country where, even if you are insured, when you get thick, you know, your greatest wory going into the operating room is how am I going to pay for this? There are some people talking about leaving the country for political reasons. This happens almost every election. Are they wrong about how easy it might be to re establish their career or

their lives somewhere else. For people who want to leave the country because they don't like the political situation, you know, they could be accused of devotion. Why don't you stay here and fight the good fight if you really are so concerned. But then you know, there are people who are genuinely disgusted with what's happened with American politics, and they see the entire democratic and indeed constitutional structure of the country have rigged. She Ha's another big shock that

people find out when they go abroad. And even if all the money that you earn if in the foreign country in foreign currency, you will still get taxed on it by the United States government. America is one of the few countries that taxes its citizens even when they go abroad and aren't actually, you know, enjoying anything other than the consular protections of the United States. Um. There is an exclusion which i've I believe a little over a hundred thousand dollars the first hundred tho dollars of

your income. Everything after that is texted federal rates, and the the U. S. Treasury is also very particular about bank accounts that you open oversees. It requires documentation and recording, so you know, you might leave America, but America won't leave you. And citizens of other countries like the EO countries find it much easier to live and work abroad. Just in terms of the logistics of it. You mentioned that it is easier for younger people to reinstate themselves abroad.

I wanted to ask if you had any advice for people who are older or have more established careers or families and who want to do this. Well. There are all kinds of websites and services that recruit Americans because you know, in spite of all the problems with the country, in almost every country that I've traveled to, and I've traveld to quite a few, Americans are universally respected for their world ethic, their efficiency, and their own ft and

it's almost unparalleled. So people who go abroad, for example, executives who posted abroad by multinationals tend to do quite well. And if you're going abroad on an expact package, you will live like a king. So there's also this reverse shock, and Americans short on expact packages come back and they don't have all the perks that go with the expat life. But for people who are just you know, picking up

and going for the first time, it's going to be difficult. Cutily, if you have a family, housing isn't cheap in much of the rest of the world, and getting into a foreign culture, of course, depending on the culture, can be quite difficult. But in most of these countries, you know, there's an American focal that will welcome you in. Even when I took my family back to India, would regularly go for things like Fourth of July parties at the American Consulate in Bombay. You did an Instagram call out

with your article for stories from expats. What were some of the responses? Like, Yeah, so the Instagram responses generally by people in the twenties or thirties who had moved all over the world A lot in Europe, a lot in South and Central America, and lots of really gorgeous pictures of these Americans frolicking and water faults and as your oceans and hanging out with a cute, cuddly animals,

sipping cappuccino in Parisian sidewalks and so forth. So they I was impressed by how good they looked, the people as well as the surroundings they were in. And as I mentioned, health care is something that was constant in these responses, the fact that there's a just dramatically better quality of health care, and also the work life balance that was very important. In most of the rest of the world except maybe Japan, people don't work as hard

as Americans and there is this big focus on eating. So, for example, if you go to Spain, even if you work for a corporation, you'll have a tour lunch break, the same thing in Italy. In many countries ne world, you'll have a siesta, and in the evenings you'll go out with people that you work with and you know,

drink with them until it's dinner timement, sometimes beyond. So there seemed to be this idea that the people who left did earn as much, didn't accumulate as much as they might have if that stayed home, although that wasn't truin every case, but most of them lived much better while they were working. Were there any challenges that people told you about. There wasn't much mention of the challenges

in the Instagram responses. You know, a couple of posts which talked about being lonely, missing family, you know, missing people, None of them as far as I could see, you know, of all the few hundreds that I saw, and the Facebook responses talked about missing things like nature or you know, New York. The vitality of it because for the people who went abroad, obviously it was a felt selected group, the people who felt that they could leave all this

and then go. And I think that's because which the air fares being what they are, you can come to America come back to it all the time. I mean, what is exile when around trip home is five hundred bucks. So this wasn't possible with earlier waves of migrations for people who left their countries like mine. You know, when we came in the nineteen seventies, we might go back to India once for every two or three years because air fare then we're much more expensive than they are now.

It was a much bigger production, you know. Now I traveled back and forth between India and the US sometimes four or five times a year. So it's easier for Americans who who go abroad to to keep their links for the home country. Well, do you have me completely sold on working abroad. So like an Instagram post, I've just to figure out how to talk my family into it. And so thank you so much for coming in and

talking to us, Thank you for having it. Seems to me that maybe the mistake a lot of people make when they think about having a career in a different country is expecting to basically completely transfer their existing life from here to there, so working a similar kind of environment, have a similar kind of job, and maybe even speak your native language. That's why Americans were looking to emigrate to New Zealand and Canada and not Brazil. Yeah, because

that's hard to adapt to different culture, different language. I found this article in the New York Times with this reporter who moved her entire family to Japan for her job, and they were working very hard to integrate into a culture that's notoriously difficult to integrate into it. Her husband quit his job to move with her. She has kids. Um,

they're both learning language which is very different than English. Um. She talks about all these different work customs which are interesting, like having to remember to bow right when you get in and you have to ask for a business card right away when meeting someone, or else that's rude. She talked about like having to fax interview requests, just all those little things, and um, it sounds like she mostly

likes it. But she talked about how her daughter hurt herself and they couldn't find hospital that spoke English and they were using their like bilingual dictionary and reading about it. It's just a paragraph in the story, but I mean,

can you imagine how insane that was in the moment? Yeah? No, And it just goes to show how much more complicated it gets when you're trying to do this with a family, when everyone involved has stakes in other things, when your your spouse has a career that they have to figure out what they're going to do about, and when you have a kid that you're trying to raise and take care of and protect and expecting that you won't face those challenges, and even expecting that you won't have to

integrate into a new culture. I think is white remains a fantasy for most people who think about it, like if they just don't end up doing anything about it, because that fantasy of working abroad it doesn't really exist. I think you should do it if you value the experience of being kind of out of your comfort zone and thrown into a new environment, and you should expect to face all these difficulties. Yeah, and that's what made all the difficulties of moving to Japan worth a firm.

A Toko Rich that New York Times reporter and the piece she talks about how her daughter came home from school one day and told her that she thought it would be cool to move around a lot. That's when Rich said she knew that she made the right decision to move her family to Tokyo because she wants her kids to value being outside their comfort zones. And now

it's time for half baked takes. Half bake takes. You can call us and leave a voicemail with your half baked take at two and two six one seven zero one six six. And if you tried to call us in the last couple of weeks and got redirected to the Bloomberg switchboard, we're very sorry. It was a technical error which is fixed now. So please is don't let those halfig takes go to waste call back and leave them on our voicemail. Becca, what do you feel super

strongly about? That doesn't really matter. I was inspired by our coworkers who were talking all about how Americans suck at vacation, and I think that the worst day is to take off are days that nobody's gonna be working anyway. So somebody mentioned this year, July four is on a Tuesday, and how you might take off the Monday before, and I say, that's dumb. Don't do that because nobody's gonna

be working anyway, and everyone's gonna leave early anyway. So why ways the whole vacation day on that unless you're trying to plan like a whole trip and you want to just if you're doing like a Tuesday to Tuesday and you want, you know, you need to take the Monday to take it off, but just the one day. Yeah, A hundred percent on board this. You should be on

the days when the office is slow. You should definitely be in the office because it's like a mini vacation, Like all you have to do is get your physical body into the office. Um, but then you're kind of free to do whatever you want. It's it's when the office really needs you that you should go on. Sounds like a very American half big take where I'm like, you know, gaming the system to like eke out the vacation days where Europeans would just be like we got

off all summer anyway or whatever. Yeah, I know, we're so obsessed with taking as little time as possible that we put way too much thought into exactly what days of the week are right to take. You know, It's it's very stressful anyway, Francesca, what is your half pick take? I have found the absolute worst autocorrect failure. It's not

even an autocorrect failure. It's just a really common text or messaging error, which is and I don't know why everyone seems to do this, and I certainly do it, replacing the exclamation point with a question mark or vice versa. Have you ever done this? I'm sure it's like a tick that you don't like that people do. No, it's I mean, it's well, it's an ax it in. But then when you do it, it completely changes the meaning

of whatever you're writing. Disastrous. So once I basically sent somebody work to do on a weekend, and I was like, it was like a group of people. I was like asking the news editors to do something and said happy long weekend news editors, but instead I put a question mark by mistakes. So it was like, happy long weekend news editors, and then actually it makes it even Yeah, it's like, here's a crappy thing I'm gonna do and

make you work on your long weekend. Um, but I've seen other people do this, and then you have to go back and correct, like you have to add a little asterisk. Can say I meanted an exclamation point, But it's the damage is done. You've already you've added a tone to your I don't know why do we do this is it's psychological. It's not at the slip of the finger that half baked dick is copy udit it your text messages, No, I refuse. Texts are the only

place where I can be lucy lucy with language. Then you're gonna pay the talk today to be editing my got a casual writing the casualties. All right, this has been half bag takes, half baked takes. Thank you for listening to game Plan. You can find me on Twitter at francesco today and I'm at RZ Greenfield. You can call our hotline and it will work at two and two six seven zero one six six. You can also hear from us during the week by subscribing to our

newsletter at bloomberg dot com Slash Newsletters. If you like the show, head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and rate and review and subscribe and tell your friends to listen. It really helps. This show was produced by Liz Smith and Magnus Hendrickson. Head of podcast is Alec McCabe. We'll see you next week at Bye m H. Every day I say something else that no one understands here. I told someone I didn't want to throw a spanner in the works, which means I don't

want to stuff up the process. I'd often get asked if I had a ball breaking yarn by my editor. That means do you have a scoop